workshop

Roughly four years ago when I was a freshman in college, I submitted one of my poems to three different journals. This was the very first time I attempted to share my poetry. Armed with the hope that the editorial board would fall desperately in love with my work and immediately, breathlessly, and without pause accept the piece (ah, the naiveté!), I waited. Of course—you can see where this is heading, right?—during the following weeks, the rejection letters came in one by one by one. I pored over the poem and tried, over and over, to figure out why it had been rejected three times in a row*.